Infrastructure of a wireless telecommunications network is deployed in the field in a way to handle traffic that is expected to be a typical to a given geographical area. The number of calls and volume of data transmission handled in a busy city centre is much higher than the number of calls and volume of data transmitted in a quiet rural area. In order to cope with these different demands different network resources are deployed in different areas in order to achieve optimal service coverage. A network designed in this way will better handle traffic that can be described as average in this particular area. The network will also better handle traffic that exceeds this average traffic. If, however, the traffic experienced by the network infrastructure temporarily exceeds significantly this average value the network starts dropping calls and data is lost due to congestion.
A sudden increase in the number of phone calls and data transmission is, or can be, a result of gathering of large number of people with their mobile phones and other devices using the wireless telecommunications network. This may be a result of a football match when thousands of football fans are gathered in a football stadium that is empty for most of the week; it can also be a music festival or any other type of event where thousands of people are suddenly gathered in a place that is normally empty. In a solution known in the art, in order to cope with an expected increased traffic a network operator increases capacity of the network in the area of the event by deploying additional radio resources (e.g. additional radio base stations (RBS)) for the time of the event.
The disadvantage of this approach, however, is that it requires prior knowledge of the event, in order to plan the change of transmission parameters in the affected area. Another disadvantage is that the changes are based on an estimated number of mobile stations that will have to be additionally served and this may lead to a situation whereby not enough resources are allocated in order to accommodate the traffic, or more resources are allocated than needed. Both situations are not desired as in the former the user experience will not be good due to congestion and in the latter some resources will be wasted.